Best CPU for NI Komplete - Reactor Maschine MK3

I can provide some perspective from the Intel side. Oh and I have stories too.

The hybrid nature, meaning the combined "efficiency cores" and "performance cores" on the chip die are nothing to be upset about or mad at.

I have a 9th gen Intel i9 laptop (it has 8 and 8 processors, I believe), and a 12th gen i9 desktop machine which has both efficiency and performance cores.

I also have an M1 Mac. M1, M2, and M3 Macs also have efficiency and performance cores, and let me tell you, Apple really shook up the world when they came out with the M1. I firmly believe that Apple's innovation in ARM architecture is what really got Intel and AMD to wake up and get off their butts to make better processors.

Having hybrid cores is NOT a new idea, not at all. UAD has been making DSP cards and audio interfaces using SHARC chips from A company called Analog Devices, and they've been doing this for just about 20 years now or more. The DSP chips just stay idle until you load a reverb or other effect or instrument that can be dispatched to run on the SHARC chip's architecture. That takes burden off of your INTEL, AMD, or Mac CPU. Having performance cores and efficiency cores on one CPU die just happens to be a natural evolution. Mainframe computers actually did this first, and then some servers had the capability, and now pretty much any iPad, Mac, or PC has some form of this.

And before that, train engines had hybrid power. For decades now, we've used diesel engines to drive massive generators, which in turn drive big electric motors to make trains go. Modern ships work the same way, because you won't break a diesel engine if the propeller stops. You might bend the shaft or damage the prop itself, but you won't have to replace the big diesel engine(s). Hybrid cars get powered by electricity AND/OR gasoline, depending on needs at any given moment.

And over 110 years ago, Titanic , Olympic, and Britannic were also hybrid-powered, although in a different way. Titanic and her sisters had "performance cores", which was two four-cylindered, four-story-tall steam engines that could directly drive two of her propeller shafts and move the ship forward.

But Titanic also had numerous smaller steam engines, some of which were actually responsible for powering shipboard electricity when docked so that crews could run the galley and serve food while in port; and not be blasting the docks with mass-quantities of smoke, ash, and soot from all 30+ of the coal boilers down below; you only needed to run one or two boilers to get electricity to the kitchens, so no need to burn more coal than necessary.

There were also a couple of these "efficiency engines" used to start the big steam engines safely. These were just smaller steam engines that were geared (literally "geared") to set the bigger engine shafts to a slow rotation rate before the big engines' steam lines were fully pressurized. Starting those massive cylinders on full steam pressure from the boilers would have just blown them apart!

So just like the trains and ships of a hundred to 200 years ago, we have hybrid engines. Some of them are chips. Your efficiency cores run your web browser and office apps, and all the YouTube cat videos you might want to watch! Your performance cores might get engaged if you fire up any native effects, and if you have UAD, those chips will take on some work if you run UAD plugins.

And if you run Folding@Home, that will use your graphic card cores. What an amazing time to be alive. Seriously!

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So now back to computers:

Buy what you want and make music with it.

Any Apple Silicon will be fine. Any Intel silicon will be fine if it's an i5 processor or higher. Any AMD processor will be fine if it is roughly comparable to the i5 or higher.

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Something ELSE to think about. I'm on Intel. I'll stay on Intel. Not because I'm in love with it, no.

I use Intel only because I never build a computer from scratch anymore. Never. I start with restored backups, then I change the Windows serial number to match the new license I bought. Then I customize accordingly until I have fashioned a new computer.

So for me, I'm on Intel because restoring from backups is easier to do if you keep to the same CPU architecture as the old computer where the backups were taken from.

So as I mentioned above, buy what you want and use it. Use what works and nobody needs to fight over computer architectures. We already have enough disagreements in politics, religion, and sports. You know I'm right! 😉

A suggestion would be for anyone looking to upgrade because their
current system seems to no longer be capable, try to understand what the
actual issue is. Are you hitting a limit on a single core, on the CPU
overall, on memory, storage or read speeds etc. Once you know what the
limitation is you can select something more accurately and unless you
plan to really change up what you do, almost anything new from the 10
year old tech you have been using will work just fine, be it AMD, Intel
or Apple M chip. Most suggestions will simply be people's personal
preferences.

This is good advice.

I just advise people to not go below an i5 "level", but maybe that's not necessary anymore.

If it helps I've been using an Intel i5 12600k CPU for a year now and very rarely max it out using 30+ tracks using a mixture of hardware synths, vst synths, samples and many effect plugins. Most of my projects use between 20 - 50 % of the CPU.